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Flying under the wings of Concorde

Flying under the wings of Concorde

Friday 11 Mar 2016

Cheltenham Prep STEM Club members, and engineers of the future, performed exceptionally in the Grand Final of the Flying Start Challenge at Fleet Air Arm Museum. This was the National stage that Prep pupils had qualified for in the previous week, having come in the top three teams of the Regional round.

The competition involved two engineering activities and Deji Adetona and Pablo Benedit became the National winners of the Flying Start Activities Challenge 2016! They had to construct a support system to hold the most mass at a set height. They used a tetrahedron design that was really effective. They also had to design a capsule to support an egg that was launched by parachute off the second floor of the museum. This then had to land accurately at the centre of a target. The boys worked very effectively together and applied lots of the engineering skills they have been learning during STEM sessions. This was a huge achievement and they did very well!

Rory Southall, Andre Zamora and Billy Mayes flew their glider under the wings of Concorde. It flew a fantastic 15 metres and was fourth overall. They also had to present their design to the Chairman of Safran, the aircraft engineering company, and some of the lead engineers from Rolls Royce and Airbus. The boys were confident and explained their designs clearly using lots of the technical terms they had learnt over the last two terms (like pitch, roll and yaw).

It was a brilliant day and the pupils were great ambassadors for Cheltenham Prep. They enjoyed exploring all of the planes and helicopters and taking part in a simulation of the activity on an aircraft carrier flight deck. STEM Club members look forward to competing again next year.